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UM EECS 487: Fall 2009 Syllabus and Lecture Notes

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• The notation "up to section K" of a required reading material means "up to and including section K."
• "Demoes" may be shown in class. "Additional readings" could help understanding. "Optional readings" may be fun. None are required. Only the two textbooks are required readings.
• Most of the links to papers below can only be accessed from ACM/IEEE subscriber hosts, e.g., umich hosts (and through VPN). The local cached copies are also accessible only from umich hosts.

Tentative syllabus:

Wed 09/09	Introduction to course, computer graphics, raster graphics, graphics pipeline and the gpu TP3 Ch. 1, Redbook Ch. 1 Demo: Strang's Linear Algebra Concepts Additional readings: Vectors and Matrices, 2009. Blythe, D., "Rise of the Graphics Processor," Proc. of the IEEE, 96(5):761-778, May 2008 (up to section III.A, plus III.D). Optional readings: Glassner, Introduction to 3D Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH Tutorial, 2008. (59.44 MB PDF file!) Lyon, Pixels and Me, 2005 (especially the last 40 minutes, including Q&A). Smith, A.R., A Pixel is not a Little Square, 1995. Cook, Carpenter, Catmull, "The Reyes Rendering Architecture," Computer Graphics, 21(4):95-102, 1987. Akenine-Moeller and Stroem, "GPU for Handhelds," Proc. of the IEEE, 96(5):779-789, May 2008 (section V.A on Tiling Architectures). Strang's recent papers on teaching Linear Algebra Applications of Matrices
Fri 09/11 Meet in 1690 CSE Assigned PA1: Raster Graphics	OpenGL introduction Redbook Ch. 2 (up to "Vertex Array"), "Basics of GLUT" Appendix Additional reading: Installing and Using GLUT and OpenGL, 2009.
Mon 09/14	OpenGL geometric pipeline and line drawing TP3 Sections 2.1-2.4
Wed 09/16	Clipping, triangle rasterization, barycentric coordinates TP3 Sections 2.9, 2.5, 2.6
Fri 09/18	Lab 1: Line rasterization All labs are held in 1620 CSE
Mon 09/21	Basic anti-aliasing, hidden surface elimination TP3 Section 2.8, 5.5.1-5.6, Redbook Ch. 6 Demoes: Brown's Nyquist Limit Z-buffer BSP Tree Explore the Brown Applets Repository Additional reading: Haeberli and Akeley, "The Accumulation Buffer: Hardware Support for High-Quality Rendering," Computer Graphics, 24(4):309-318, 1990. Optional reading: Crow, "The Aliasing Problem in Computer-Generated Shaded Images," CACM, 20(11):799-805, 1977.
Wed 09/23	Compositing (alpha-blending) and fog, 2D modeling transforms and homogeneous coordinates Redbook Chs. 6, 10, TP3 Sections 3.1-3.5, 3.10 Demoes: 2D Geometric Transformations Brown's Affine Transforms Additional reading: Vectors and Matrices, 2009. Matrices and Determinants Porter and Duff, "Compositing Digital Images," Computer Graphics, 18(3):253-259, 1984.
Fri 09/25	Lab 2: Triangle rasterization
Mon 09/28 PA1 Due Assigned PA2: 3D Scene Rendering	More 2D transforms TP3 Section. 3.6 Demoes: Popovic's Change of Basis
Wed 09/30	3D transforms, viewing, and parallel projection transformations TP3 Sections 3.7, 3.8, 4.1, 4.2, 4.4, Redbook Ch. 3 Additional readings: Transforms, 2009.
Fri 10/02	Lab 3: The math behind transformations
Mon 10/05 Assigned HW1	Perspective projection, more homogeneous coordinates, screen mapping TP3 rest of Ch. 4, rest of Ch. 5, Redbook Ch. 3 Demoes: Perspective Camera Transformations
Wed 10/07	Transforms in OpenGL, Light and color TP3 Ch. 11 Demoes: Brown's Color Mixing Color Space Conversion
Fri 10/09	Lab 4: Modeling transformations in OpenGL
Mon 10/12	HDR and tone mapping, Lighting TP3 Sections 10.5, 12.1, 12.2, 12.4-12.6 (12.5.1 up to normal of triangles), Redbook Ch. 5, Ch. 2 section on normal vectors and Appendix H Optional readings: Debevec and Malik, "Recovering High Dynamic Range Radiance Maps from Photographs," Proc. of SIGGRAPH '97 Ward, Rushmeier, and Piatko, "A Visibility Matching Tone Reproduction Operator for High Dynamic Range Scenes," IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 1997
Wed 10/14	Shading and shaders Redbook Ch. 15 Additional readings: Gouraud, H., "Continuous Shading of Curved Surfaces," IEEE Trans. on Computers, C-20(6):623-629, June 1971. Phong, B-T., "Illumination for Computer Generated Pictures," CACM, 18(6):311-317, June 1975. Cook, "Shade Trees," Computer Graphics, 18(3):223-231, 1984. Owens, J.D. et al., "GPU Computing," Proc. of the IEEE, 96(5):879-899, May 2008 (up to section III.A). Optional readings: Fatahalian and Houston, "A Closer Look at GPUs," CACM, 51(10):50-57, 2008. Akenine-Moeller and Stroem, "GPU for Handhelds," Proc. of the IEEE, 96(5):779-789, May 2008. Blythe, D., "The Direct3D 10 System," Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH, 2006, and the accompanying presentation. Blinn, "Models of Light Reflection for Computer Synthesized Pictures," Computer Graphics, pp. 192-198, 1977 (lots of OCR errors).
Fri 10/16	Lab 5: OpenGL lighting
Mon 10/19	NO CLASS - FALL BREAK
Wed 10/21 HW1 Due	Texture mapping, mipmapping TP3 Section 2.7, Ch. 14 up to Section 14.4, Redbook Ch. 9 Demo: Texture Mapping Additional reading: Low, K-L., Perspective-Correct Interpolation, March 2002. Optional reading: Blinn and Newell, "Texture and Reflection in Computer Generated Images," CACM, 19(10):542-547, 1976. Williams, "Pyramidal Parametrics," Computer Graphics, 17(3):1-11, 1983.
Fri 10/23	Lab 6: GPU shaders & GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language)
Mon 10/26 PA2 Due Assigned PA3: Ray Tracing	Environment mapping, bump mapping, procedural texture TP3 rest of Ch. 14 except Section 14.8 Demo: Wood Texture Marble Texture Optional readings: Debevec, The Story of Reflection Mapping Blinn, "Simulation of Wrinkled Surfaces," Computer Graphics, 12(3):286-292, 1978 (lots of OCR errors).
Wed 10/28	Lab 7: Textures (meet in 1620 CSE), no late penalty till Mon, 11/02, 1:00 pm Midterm review 6-7:30 pm in 1005 DOW
Fri 10/30	NO CLASS Midterm Exam, 6-8 pm in 1500 EECS
Mon 11/02	Ray Tracing and Global illumination TP3 Ch. 15 Demo: Refraction
Wed 11/04	More ray tracing: setup, ray-objection intersection, acceleration techniques, anti-aliasing, soft-shadows TP3 Ch. 15
Fri 11/06	Lab 8: Basic ray-tracing
Mon 11/09 Assigned HW2	Distributed raytracing and soft shadows, bidirectional raytracing and caustics TP3 Sections 15.7, 16.5.3, Ch. 13 BRDF, radiosity, photon mapping TP3 Sections 12.3, 12.10, 12.11, Ch. 16 Additional reading: Cook, R.L. and Torrance, K.E., "A Reflectance Model for Computer Graphics," ACM Transaction on Graphics, 1(1):7-24, 1982. Optional reading: Jarosz, Jensen, Donner, "Advanced Global Illumination Using Photon Mapping," SIGGRAPH '08 Tutorial.
Wed 11/11	Polygonal mesh and parametric curves TP3 Ch. 7 (except 7.6), Redbook Ch. 11
Fri 11/13	Lab 9: Advanced ray-tracing
Mon 11/16 PA3 Due AssignedPA4: Animation	Parametric curves: Hermite and Bezier and natural splines Demo: Bezier Patch Curve Interpolation
Wed 11/18	Hierarchical Modeling, Inverse Kinematics, and Scene management TP3 Ch. 9, Sections 17.1-17.2.3 Demoes: Brown's Hierarchy of transformations
Fri 11/20	Lab 10: Splines I - interpolation/approximation
Mon 11/23	Quaternions and other animation topics TP3 Sections 3.9, 17.3-17.6 Demo: Perlin's Walkers Additional readings: Reynolds, "Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model," Computer Graphics, 21(4):25-34, 1987. Lasseter, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," Computer Graphics, 21(4):35-44, 1987. Reeves, "Particle Systems--A Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects," ACM Transaction on Graphics, 2(2):91-108, 1983. Optional readings: Yang, Yip, and Xu, "Visual Effects in Computer Games," IEEE Computer, 42(7):48-56, July 2009. Roble and Zafar, "Don't Trust Your Eyes: Cutting-Edge Visual Effects," IEEE Computer, 42(7):35-41, July 2009. Video clips accompanying the above two papers. Stam, "Real-Time Fluid Dynamics for Games," Proc. of GDC '03.
Wed 11/25	Guest Lecture: "Mixing 3D Graphics with Reality in Realtime: Augmented Reality in 2009 and Beyond" Jeff Powers, co-Founder of Occipital, a mobile computer vision startup based in Boulder, CO. Jeff architects realtime vision-based systems that are used in Occipital's mobile applications on iPhone and Android platforms.
Fri 11/27	NO CLASS - THANKSGIVING BREAK
Mon 11/30 5:30-7:00 pm in 1670 CSE	Guest Lecture: "Rivers of Rodents, Lots of Bots, and Cavalcades of Canines: Crowd Simulation at Pixar Animation Studios" Paul Kanyuk, Pixar Animation Studios Abstract: This talk will start with a general presentation of Pixar Animation Studios and our film making process, followed by discussions of our crowd simulation pipeline and the challenges faced on Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up. On Ratatouille, an animation centric crowd pipeline was born, merging the strengths of our proprietary rigging tools and the commercially available software, Massive. Wall-E demanded fast physics for large crowds, for which the technology "Brain Springs" was created. For Up, the focus was flexible navigation and terrain following for a pack of vicious dogs. Learn how these crowds came to life and how technological improvements helped bring audiences all those Rats, Robots, and Rottweilers. Additional reading: Kanyuk, "Brain Springs: Fast Physics for Large Crowds in WALL*E," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 29(4):19-25, July/August 2009 (video clips accompanying paper).
Wed 12/02 HW2 Due	B-Splines, NURBS Redbook Ch. 12 Mesh simplification (tentative) TP3 Ch. 6 Parametric surfaces (tentative) TP3 Section 7.6, Ch. 8 Demoes: B-splines Additional reading: Sharp, "Subdivision Surface Theory," Game Developer Magazine, Jan. 2000.
Fri 12/04	Lab 11: Splines II - keyframe animation
Mon 12/07 5:30-7:00 pm in 1500 EECS	Guest lecture: "Visual Effects: From Film to Real-Time" Jonathan Cohen, nvidia Abstract: This talk will cover recent trends and techniques in state-of-the-art feature film visual effects. As a recent case study, I will talk about the "Sandstorm" effects system which was developed at Sony Imageworks for Spider-Man 3. Sandstorm was used to model, animate, simulate, and render hundreds of millions of sand grains per frame to create the Sandman character. Sandstorm was designed to push the limits of visual fidelity, and therefore complex tasks took several hours of computation on high-end CPUs. The enormous gains in computational throughput afforded by modern programmable GPUs allows for many of these techniques to be run interactively on consumer-level GPUs. I will present recent work at NVIDIA developing fluid simulation, volume rendering, and ray tracing systems that deliver quality comparable to that seen in feature films, but at interactive rates. The talk will conclude with a discussion the issue of convergence between films and video games, and important research topics to the future of both.
Wed 12/09	Terrain generation and fractals, non-photorealistic rendering Additional reading: Agrawal, "Non-photorealistic Rendering: Unleashing the Artist's Imagination," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 29(4):81-85, July/August 2009.
Fri 12/11 Meet in 1690 CSE	Visualization and volume rendering TP3 Ch. 10, 18 (except 18.3)
Mon 12/14 PA4 Due	Final exam review
Fri 12/18	Final Exam 4:00-6:00pm TBD